After the decimation of Janata Dal United (JDU) in 2014 general elections, Nitish Kumar resigned owning moral propriety and Jitan Majhi took over as the new Chief Minister of Bihar. Nitish Kumar’s egoistic decision of breaking ties with BJP proved suicidal and it appears that Nitish is slowly being pushed to the oblivion! This line may sound very harsh on a politician of the stature of Nitish Kumar, but ground realities say so.

Before coming to the ground conditions of Bihar and
the real reason of his resignation, let’s put an eye on Nitish
Kumar’s journey till date!

In
Focus

Nitish Kumar, inspired by JP, Lohiya joined politics
in late 70s. He was a very bright probable but lost to aura and
charisma of Lalu Yadav in Bihar polity. He was cornered and finally
left Janata Party. It was George Fernandez who gave shelter to Nitish
Kumar in his ‘Samata Party’ founded in 1994. Samata Party became
an alliance of NDA in 1996 from where real Nitish Kumar started
emerging. His works as railways minister in Vajpayee government
brought a lot of appraisal from the public. Later as Union
Agricultural Minister, he too excelled as a great administrator.

Till 2005, Lalu Yadav was an invincible leader in
Bihar. Nitish Kumar first became chief minister for 7 days in 2000,
although his ‘Samata party’ got lesser number of seats than BJP.
It’s Advani and Vajpayee’s confidence on him, which pushed him as
Chief Ministerial candidate. However, NDA got majority in 2005 and
Nitish Kumar became Chief Minister of Bihar. Soon he started
performing excellently and people started comparing his developmental
work along with Modi’s Gujarat model.

There I think the rivalry started. Many think that
Nitish broke ties with BJP because of his Prime Ministerial ambition.
But I think Nitish Kumar was well aware of the fact that representing
Bihar on the shoulders of a regional party, he can’t be a Prime
Minister.

It’s his fierce rivalry with Modi in fact, that
made him very adamant and finally broke the tie sensing that Modi
would be the Prime Ministerial candidate of BJP! Some even suspect
that he severed the ties as per the suggestion from veteran BJP
leaders, so as to obstruct Modi’s progression as Prime Ministerial
candidate.

Whatever may be the reasons, JDU left NDA and Nitish
hoped that he would get mandate of Bihar due to his developmental
credentials. Unfortunately he was so busy in Modi bashing that he
forgot the fact that from the day his divorce with BJP, there was
virtually governance paralysis for an year till the election.

After the decimation of his party, Nitish Kumar knew
that he has now enemies both outside and inside. Those who don’t
know regarding JDU must visit the past history. JDU although appears
to be one party, it’s in fact conglomeration of two dominant
parties! In fact Janata Dal was divided in 1999 as JD(S) led by by
Devegouda and JD (U) led by Sharad Yadav in 1999. The larger JDU
bearing the electoral symbol ‘Arrow’ of JDU and’ flag’ of
Samata Party was constituted as an anti -Lalu Yadav forum and allied
with BJP.

Thus in JDU, although Nitish Kumar enjoys importance
as Chief Minister, but doesn’t enjoy much loyalty from his party
leaders as most are from original JDU and few are from old Samata
party. Majority in JDU were against breaking of ties with BJP. But
its Nitish’s insistence that the party had to agree that Nitish
could do a miracle at least in Bihar! But election results made the
party men looking for blood of Nitish Kumar.

Majority of the members loyal to Sharad Yadav had
proposed three ways, first is to return to NDA, second is to throw
away the old Samata party people and either support or merge in BJP,
and third option was to take support of Lalu Yadav in the name of
secular front to save some political ground.

Nitish was aware of such developments. That’s why
he initially tried to snatch some RJD MLAs to prove that his group is
equally stronger in JDU, but failed. Now the obvious was there,
either the party breaks or Nitish goes away as CM. Nitish played safe
and resigned. There was some drama in Patna with a very small crowd
supporting Nitish, but there was no reaction anywhere else in Bihar.
Nitish realized that his story ended here and had to handover the
charge to Jitan Majhi.

Now the end game appears to be very interesting and
may be Nitish Kumar’s story is over! First he can’t return to
NDA. Second he may travel across Bihar to sale his development model
but BJP is equally strong in development agenda and their logic that
it was BJP ministers who in fact were doing development work is
proved beyond doubt because since the break up, forget about
development, no governance is visible since a year!

On the ground of secular credentials (rather say
minority vote bank politics), he can’t beat Lalu Yadav. Jitan Majhi
enjoys majority support. Lalu Yadav’s RJD has also extended an
un-conditional support to his government, but definitely not without
any reason!

Thus what would be the conclusion? While Nitish
Kumar dug his own grave due to egoistic rivalry, Sharad Yadav and
Lalu Yadav combined wrote the script of sending Nitish Kumar to
oblivion! Although it’s always said that never write off any
politician but the curious case of Nitish Kumar appears to heading to
a point of no return!

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